Naftali Bennett, Israel’s New Prime Minister, Surprised Us All

By Noga Tarnopolsky, NYT      June 15, 2021

Few politicians have more experience than Naftali Bennett with being heckled and jeered, usually by left-wing rivals, for his hard-line positions opposing the establishment of a Palestinian state. But it must have been jarring to be the target of insults and abuse hurled by his fellow right-wingers when he tried to deliver his maiden speech as Israel’s unlikeliest and possibly luckiest incoming prime minister on Sunday.

Mr. Bennett responded to the torrent of abuse as he usually does, with sphinxlike self-possession. In a chaotic Knesset session, which included a tirade delivered by the departing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Bennett looked sane.

And yet Mr. Bennett, a modern Orthodox Jew and a techie who is generally viewed as a figure to Mr. Netanyahu’s right, has never fully won over the Israeli public. He began his prime ministership heading a party that holds only six of the Knesset’s 120 seats. Without the remarkable concession made by Yair Lapid — Mr. Bennett’s centrist, secular partner, whose party, Yesh Atid, won 17 seats — Mr. Bennett’s elevation would not have taken place.

His immediate and paramount task is to assure Israelis that he can be a unifying leader for a country that is sharply fractured.

I have covered political leaders for many years, but I hadn’t spent much time thinking about Mr. Bennett until a chance encounter in March 2016, when he was one of several ultra-right-wing contenders to Mr. Netanyahu’s throne. He was especially known for advocating the annexation of much of the occupied West Bank, years before Mr. Netanyahu brought it into the mainstream.

I was heading to Argentina to see family and to cover President Barack Obama’s visit to Buenos Aires, and I bumped into Mr. Bennett’s foreign policy adviser at Ben Gurion Airport. It turned out that Mr. Bennett, who then held the ministerial portfolios of education and diaspora affairs, was also flying to Argentina, where he would address leaders at a World Jewish Congress assembly.

Once we were airborne, the adviser asked if I’d go up to the front of the plane, because Mr. Bennett wanted to discuss Latin America with me. I thus found myself standing for about an hour in a near-empty business class, being peppered with questions from him.

He asked exactly the questions you’d want to hear from an Israeli leader heading to Latin America. One question led to the other in intriguing twists of thought. He made interesting connections and distinctions regarding a region of the world about which he knew next to nothing; his mind moved faster than his words. We spoke about Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, their leaders, the intricacies of Israel’s diplomatic relations with each and, in great detail, their Jewish histories and communities.

Gone was the sneering, indelicate Mr. Bennett, the politician who once responded to a provocation from a Knesset member, Ahmad Tibi, with “We already had a Jewish state here when you were still climbing up trees.”

The Mr. Bennett I met with over the next three days in Buenos Aires was an engaged leader with a supple, sophisticated mind. The gap between his private and public personas seemed vast and mystifying. My respect for Mr. Bennett the man grew even as my esteem for Mr. Bennett the politician waned. It seemed that something prevented him from sharing his full complexity with the Israeli public.

Mr. Bennett cemented his reputation for extremism with a vicious Knesset campaign in 2015, which included a racist attack ad targeting a left-wing candidate, Yossi Yonah, who is of Iraqi origin. Packed with misleading or fabricated quotes, it depicted Mr. Yonah, a professor of philosophy at Ben Gurion University, as a “Hamasnik” who viewed the Holocaust and Palestinian suffering as indistinguishable.

Two years later, Mr. Yonah also saw the other side of Mr. Bennett. He sponsored a bill guaranteeing state funding for educational services for homebound sick children as young as 3 and had to meet with Mr. Bennett to ask for government support. “He was charming and deep,” Mr. Yonah told me last week, noting that Mr. Bennett had publicly apologized to him for the offensive ad. “He was interested in my academic work. He asked about my thesis. We discussed Aristotelian philosophy.” Mr. Yonah said he doesn’t believe that Mr. Bennett’s racist stance is genuine.

Over the years, I’ve asked many people who know him about the two Naftali Bennetts. Yohanan Plesner, who heads the Israel Democracy Institute and has known Mr. Bennett since their army days, describes him as torn between “pleasing his right-wing settler base and his more pragmatic instincts.”

Mr. Plesner predicted that as prime minister, Mr. Bennett will “act as the pragmatic national leader most Israelis expect him to be.”

Israelis may have been able to glimpse some of this pragmatism in his calm demeanor during Sunday’s raucous session. But his most consequential declaration so far came on May 30, when he announced his alliance with Mr. Lapid to a nation worn down by more than two years without a stable government, four inconclusive elections and a recent bout of war. That’s the day he sealed Mr. Netanyahu’s fate.

The unity government, Mr. Bennett said, will be not about “me but about us.” His message reminded me of our encounter in Buenos Aires. However outlandish it may seem to describe him as the man who can bring Israelis together, in unguarded moments he has long described himself as a unifier.

During that speech in Buenos Aires five years ago, when the thought of him as prime minister was unfathomable, he described his aim as “overcoming all the disagreements that exist, not fuzzing them. Not saying they don’t exist but being able to have different views and working together.”

Israel, he explained, needed a bridge. “I view my goal in the State of Israel,” he said, as being “that very bridge.” Whether he wins over Israelis or not, they will undoubtedly see a Mr. Bennett they haven’t seen before.

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Noga Tarnopolsky is a Jerusalem-based correspondent whose work on the region, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American diplomacy in the Middle East has appeared in numerous publications. She has also reported extensively from Argentina.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Ms. Tarnopolsky is a Jerusalem-based correspondent who has covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American diplomacy in the Middle East for two decades.

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June 16, 2021 | 16 Comments »

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16 Comments / 16 Comments

  1. Meron probe to target politicians, police officials, religious figures – report
    Government will allocate NIS 6 million to commission of inquiry expected to investigate behavior of former ministers Amir Ohana, Aryeh Deri, and Yaakov Litzman
    By TOI staff Today, 9:23 pm [06-20-21]

    A formal taskforce charged with investigating the April 30 disaster at Mount Meron, which left 45 people dead, will investigate the behavior and decision-making of former public security minister Amir Ohana, former interior minister Aryeh Deri, and former housing minister Yaakov Litzman, who all were in office at the time of the incident, Channel 12 reported Sunday.

    While Deri and Litzman had no direct responsibilities for the Mount Meron site, they reportedly pressured the relevant authorities to allow the event to proceed without limitations.

    The report said that other officials who are expected to be probed by the taskforce include Israel Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai and Northern District Police Chief Shimon Lavi. Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, chairman of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, who was selected to lead a committee in charge of the site last year, is also expected to be investigated, alongside Yossi Schwinger, head of the National Center for the Development of Holy Places, for not adequately ensuring the safety of the site.

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/meron-probe-to-target-politicians-police-officials-religious-figures-report/

    Somehow I doubt that the Hareidi parties are going to be entering the coalition any time soon.

  2. @peloni

    I wasn’t interpreting anything.

    Please recall, that my point was NOT whether he said something in March or what exactly he said in March BUT

    THAT HE SAID IT ABOUT THE PARTIES AND NOT ABOUT THE HAREIDIM IN GENERAL.

    I referred you to an article which confirmed this.

    My other point was that

    HE NEVER INVITED THE HAREIDI PARTIES TO JOIN THE COALITION.

    Anyway, I don’t think that any minister in the government is free to make decisions about who will or will not join the coalition.

    Can you quit haisplitting about what EXACTLY Liberman said in March and second guessing what I might have thought of it because it is completely irrelevant?

  3. @Reader
    Ok, you didn’t truncate it. You quoted a truncated reinterpretation of what he actually said, which was distinctly different from what he did say. And which he has made no attempt to retract even to this day.

    I find it revealing that we are talking about two statements of which you would interpret the statement made in March through a guise of what someone might think he meant, but desire to stick to a clear didactic read out of the statement he made more recently.

  4. @peloni

    I didn’t truncate anything.

    I gave the link to the full article where Liberman is quoted and they state that he said it about the PARTIES not about the Hareidi public just as I said before.

    In the original quote Netanyahu was included together with the Hareidim.

    You admit that Liberman never invited the Hareidi parties into the coalition and that you simply read too much into what he said.

  5. @Bear Klein
    Fair point, Bear. Political rhetoric has served its purpose, til the next election in any case. In spite of the current posturing, it is now time to see how this gov’t can rule, and to that end, self-interest could gain it a wider coalition, if the egos can all fit at a single table.

  6. @Reader
    But you truncated Lieberman’s quote from March that I stated in whole.

    “I will send the Charedim, together with Netanyahu, in one wheelbarrow to a garbage dump.”

    This is what he said and he did not correct it, to my knowledge. It was an offensive and harsh rebuke in a back and forth public quarrel between he and the Heredi parties. And your dislike of the Heredi parties should not blind you of either his words or their implied reference. If he mispoke, as all men do, he should have at that time or some time since corrected his meaning or better yet just have apologized for its unacceptable nature. But he has not. And even now that he holds this great role in the gov’t he has not made this retraction clear.

    Regarding my statement that he called for the Heredi to join, you are correct, that is overstating what was included in his statements. But it was as I first characterized it “a good first move” towards that end, possibly. He did make an attempt to lessen the concerns of the Heredi that he was acting to their benefit, and soon after made a reference to a new goal of making the coalition more stable. I do believe the two statements are unlikely to have been unrelated, but this could be more of an interpretation by me towards the coalitions need of the Heredi support than was intended by Lieberman. Bennett needs to dilute the Leftist and Raam votes, and a few pickups from Likud defectors will not be sufficient for his intent to obtain the goals of ten steps to the right. The Heredi parties could be an obvious solution towards that goal. But it will require a lot of accommodating between egos, so perhaps your suspicions, and hopes, will bear fruit. We will have to see how it moves forward.

  7. Funny arguing about what politicians promised during elections and during negotiations. Really that is expected to be the final word. Maybe or maybe self-interest will in the end rule.

  8. @Reader
    But you truncated Lieberman’s quote from March that I stated in whole.

    “I will send the Charedim, together with Netanyahu, in one wheelbarrow to a garbage dump.”

    This is what he said and he did not correct it, to my knowledge. It was an offensive and harsh rebuke in a back and forth public quarrel between he and the Heredi parties. And your dislike of the Heredi parties should not blind you of either his words or their implied reference. If he mispoke, as all men do, he should have at that time or some time since corrected his meaning or better yet just have apologized for its unacceptable nature. But he has not. And even now that he holds this great role in the gov’t he has not made this retraction clear.

    Regarding my statement that he called for the Heredi to join, you are correct, that is overstating of what was included in his statements. But it was as I first characterized it “a good first move” towards that end, possibly. He did make an attempt to lessen the concerns of the Heredi that he was acting to their benefit, and soon after made a reference to a new goal of making the coalition more stable. I do believe the two statements are not likely to have been unrelated, but this could be more of an interpretation towards the coalitions need of the Heredi support than was intended by Lieberman. So we will see how this moves forward.

  9. @Reader

    I don’t see any change here.

    The change is that prior to this point Lieberman declared he would not sit the the Heredi parties. He wouldn’t even negotiate with them, and offers by the Heredi parties were made. So, after withholding support for a Right wing gov’t, he now controls the power of the public purse in this gov’t where the Right hold a minority say and the Muslim Brotherhood can bring down the gov’t, thus trading one ultra-religious group for a terrorist supporting religious group – not the best bargain for Lieberman or the country, I think.

    In fairness to Lieberman’s stated goals, he now stands in a much better negotiating position with his former partners. But to suggest this is nothing new is to ignore his call for the Heredi parties to join the gov’t to prevent all that will otherwise harm them. The Heredi will recognize the threat of the situation and would be foolish to dismiss it lightly. It could have, and should have, been more carefully stated, but Lieberman could probably do no better in this vain attempt at a call to parley. But Lieberman’s statement was not addressed to the Heredi parties – he was quite clear.

    “I will send the Charedim, together with Netanyahu, in one wheelbarrow to a garbage dump.”

    It was a mistake to make this statement and it was a greater mistake to not correct it at the time. The vile statement was made in a heated political polemic in the midst of a great public quarrel, but the subject was quite clearly stated as the Heredim and not their political representatives – and he has had months to correct the error if there had been one and he still does not say this is the case – only that it was “misunderstood”, not a very definitive correction, I would say.

    The current political reality places the Heredi parties in a position of subservience to his will but the gov’t needs their votes so Bennett does not have to barter and empower the Right to gain access to passing even the most basic of Zionist measures, which the Heredi parties have no problem supporting.

    And the Heredi parties are easily considered Right wing when compared to many of Bennetts various partners who include the Brotherhood. It would be silly to claim otherwise – though a prejudice against them may lead some to suggest this is not the case, it is their hate of them that would support that view and not reality.

    The Heredi parties will support a Zionist agenda, should Bennett be so fortunate as to win their entry into his “Unity” gov’t. It should be noted that the term Unity gov’t applied to Bennett’s gov’t, currently, would suggest there is no need of the Heredi parties to make it a Unity gov’t. This is a point that I have yet to read commented on by anyone.

    Bennet has elements of everyone else, even the Brotherhood has a seat at the table, but without the Heredi, it really is a slight upon their community to utilize the term. And I find anyone’s great intolerance of their partnership in the gov’t to be quite revealing when considering the Muslim Brotherhood holds a position as Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s office, not to mention Meretz controlling the Ministry of Transportation. Such mindless disregard of them really does portray an unwise tolerance for the supporters of Hamas within this gov’t.

  10. the UTJ and Shas also potentially have a lot to gain by being in the coalition

    Of course they do. And self interest is a powerful motivator, but egos seem to trump more tangible motives as of late as can be seen in each of the past 4 elections. And it is true that the Heredi will be better served if they strike a bargain, but Lieberman’s statement was obviously a move towards a reproachment with the two Heredi leaders. And ignoring the Heredi parties for a moment, Bennett needs them, and he needs Lieberman to create the atmosphere that the Heredim will feel better about surrendering to their current reality.

    Only Lieberman can do that, and it is fair that even if such an atmosphere were not to be created they might still surrender to their circumstances, but they might not. It is an important gamble that Bennett/Lieberman would be wise to increase the odds of expanding their merry group by making certain that every effort of easing the humiliation of the Heredi leaders that is unavoidable – I think Lieberman’s statement was a missed opportunity at a sincere move in that direction. Lieberman’s statement was unpracticed and poorly delivered, from what I can discern(you can tell me if you think otherwise).

    It will be hard for the Heredi to partner with Liberman and Lapid each under any circumstance, let alone what is being planned, and it would require their parting with the Right after a long alliance with them. With all of this in mind, it would have been wiser for Lieberman to have made that statement a little more sincere, I believe, and it likely was intended to be so, but, well, as I said, it was a bad first move. It will likely not be the final move, but we will see.

    As I said before, the inclusion of the Heredi parties makes Bennett’s gov’t viable but it still won’t give him the force of numbers required to fulfill his pledge of ten steps to the right, unfortunately. But perhaps he has a plan for that as well, if it is not letting the Right propose the Right wing legislation that he cannot pass without them. Domestic reforms with the Left and Right wing Legislation with the Right – a very curious solution where the instability of it all could afford a certain stability.

    Even should this be his plan and it actually would work, the rise of the Left is concerning. Lapid’s recent statements using the excuse of the US Iran situation as a explanation for returning to the failed policy of his Leftist collegues in past gov’t’s is just an example of why this should provide no end of unease for us all – I know it does for me, in any case. His words were not recklessly stated, but quite deliberate. I believe we will be hearing more of his Peacenik dialogue in the coming days and weeks and months, or however long he unfortunately may occupy such a sensitive position as the Foreign Ministry.

  11. The only thing Liberman said was that he regrets if someone took his rude remark about the Hareidim badly [I think he meant the Haredi parties at the time, not the Hareidim in general] and he shouldn’t have said it, otherwise his plans in regards to them remain the same, namely, that they study the core subjects, go to work, contribute to and integrate into society.

    I don’t see any change here.

    The Hareidi parties entry into the coalition will be disastrous for the coalition.

    I don’t know why some consider them “right wing” – because they are religious fanatics?

    The coalition does need some defectors (who are still decent people if any of this kind can still be found in that party) from Likud.

    I hope Bennett does not become Netanyahu #2 because what was all that sound and fury with the new government about then?

  12. @Peloni the UTJ and Shas also potentially have a lot to gain by being in the coalition. Self interest and their view on it will determine if they join the coalition. They take a calculated risk waiting for the budget to be created before they join. Once the pie is divided up and the coalition passes the budget they will be out in the woods eating grass.

  13. Here it is…Lieberman calling the Heredim to forgive his vile campaign rhetoric, sort of..in a transparently awkward attempt that is fairly dismissive of both his statements and the consequences of his plans to the Heredi lifestyle…
    It goes something like this: “No one should believe what I said was what I meant because I never meant it and I don’t think I ever said it. But if I did, just ignore it and join us. It will be better for you and better for us and this way Bibi won’t win.”
    Well, smart move for Bennett to push Lieberman to make the first move to save his gov’t – I bet Lieberman was practicing those lines since last Sunday, but he might have been better served if he took another week to learn how to show a little humility in his apology for his vile invectives. Everyone, of course, injects hateful remarks in a campaign, but Lieberman NEEDS the Heredi to join them or they are likely looking at a hard road to a short run. And of course, the Heredi are quite aware of this and will be reluctant to come to terms no matter how big the crow is that Lieberman chows down. Bad first move, I think.

    Liberman: Statement on dumping haredim ‘was not the most successful’
    Finance Minister says his pre-election statement that he would send the haredi community “to a garbage dump” was misunderstood.
    Tags: Haredim Avigdor Liberman
    Elad Benari, Canada , Jun 18 , 2021 11:41 PM
    Share

    Avigdor Liberman
    Avigdor Liberman
    Israel Bar Association spokesperson

    Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman acknowledged on Friday that his pre-election statement that he would send the haredi community “in one wheelbarrow to a garbage dump” should not have been made.

    “The statement was misunderstood, there was no intention here. It was perhaps not the most successful statement, but so be it,” Liberman said in an interview on the Ofira & Berkovic program which airs on Channel 12.

    He rejected claims that the haredim should be concerned over his appointment as Finance Minister, saying, “They should not be afraid. We are doing what is good for them and the country. I do not want to interfere with their lifestyle, nor do I want them to interfere with my lifestyle. They should study core subjects, acquire a profession and not be dependent on donations their entire lives. It is inconceivable that the percentage of eligibility for matriculation in Modi’in is over 90%, and in Modi’in Illit 5.5%. We do not want to harm anyone, but that everyone will contribute to society and integrate into society.”

    Liberman predicted that the new government would last for many days: “Before the election, we set three goals – a change of government and its leader, the removal of Shas and United Torah Judaism from the coalition, and that we will get the Treasury portfolio. New goals now need to be set, and the two important goals are to stabilize the coalition and approve the budget. Once we pass a responsible and serious budget and stabilize the coalition, the election will be another four and a half years from now.”

    He was asked about his promise before the election not to be part of a coalition with the Ra’am party but ultimately joining a government with Ra’am.

    “It was Netanyahu who legitimized Ra’am. Between the alternative of going to a fifth election or forming such an eclectic government, a government is better than a fifth election. I agree that we need to invest in infrastructure in the Arab sector as well,” said Liberman.

    Asked whether he thinks Benjamin Netanyahu will return to power, Liberman replied, “Politics are like a wheel, sometime you’re up and sometimes you’re down. I don’t know if he will come back.”

  14. I hope Bennet disappoints Ms. Tarnopolsky. If the NYT let’s her write paens to Bennet, she must be to Bennet as Delilah was to Samson.